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Friday, February 5, 2010

These are the tombs of Earl Richard Fitzalan (1306-1376) and Countess Eleanor de Lancaster (1318-1372), who are currently believed to be my 22nd (via Richard) & 23rd (via Alice) & 24th (via Joan) great-grandparents. Today, the 5th day of February, is the anniversary of the day they married . . . in 1345 . . . at Ditton Church in Buckinghamshire, England.

Side by side, their faces blurred,The earl and countess lie in stone,Their proper habits vaguely shownAs jointed armour, stiffened pleat,And that faint hint of the absurd -The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroqueHardly involves the eye, untilIt meets his left-hand gauntlet, stillClasped empty in the other; andOne sees, with a sharp tender shock,His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.Such faithfulness in effigyWas just a detail friends would see:A sculptor's sweet commissioned graceThrown off in helping to prolongThe Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early inTheir supine stationary voyageThe air would change to soundless damage,Turn the old tenantry away;How soon succeeding eyes beginTo look, not read. Rigidly, they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadthsOf time. Snow fell, undated. LightEach summer thronged the glass. A brightLitter of birdcalls strewed the sameBone-riddled ground. And up the pathsThe endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.Now, helpless in the hollow ofAn unarmorial age, a troughOf smoke in slow suspended skeinsAbove their scrap of history,Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon, and to proveOur almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love.